David:
How could I possibly pay up when you commenced upon “attacking” that poor defenseless message board?
Yer pal,
Satan
snort splutter choking on coffee
Thanks Satan for giving me the best laugh I’ve had in a week.
“But I can cry until I laugh or laugh until I cry.
So cut the deck right in half, I’ll play from either side…”
- Mary Chapin Carpenter
Oh, here’s a surprise. Satan reneging on a deal. Sheesh. I mean, if you can’t trust Satan, who can you trust?!
(And if anybody answers, “Jesus,” I’m gonna have to smack you around for not having a sense of humor!)
[Tangent]
(Yes, this actually happened to me once. I had a friend in the dorms – a freshman who was overwhelmed with the whole college/being away from home concept. He found religion and became the absolute stereotype Bible thumper. One time near finals (I was up early to study; he was up early to read his Bible – guess which one did better on the test), I bumped into him at the water fountain. He made some comment, to which I replied jokingly, “Can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” He replied, quite seriously, “In Jesus, of course.” Um. Yeah. Thanks.)
[/Tangent]
Sake – At the time of my post I had not been current on the reasons for everyone’s general disgust, or the extent of the hackles raised by the LBMB folks, and thus took yer comments as general hostility.
Yer ‘bastard son’ and ‘mentality of these individuals’ comments simply got my ire up, and led me to conclude that you were being deliberately inflammatory and arrogantly dismissive. In re-reading, it seems that my own post can be interpreted to contain a certain hostility that was not intended. I thank you for a measured response.
Certainly I have no personal faith in a deity, but to call faith irrational is to indict the larger number of the greatest thinkers from earliest history to modern times. Faith and intellect are by no means mutually exclusive.
Concerning ethics, morality, and nihilism: How many nihilists does it take to make up a quorum? (snicker) Since we’re operating under a presumed haze of religion here I’ll assume ye speak of Chauncey Wright’s nihilistic agnosticism rather than Sartre’s rather broader attribution or Peckham’s literary nonsense. To my knowledge there is nothing other than fringe thinking that excludes ethics or morality from philosophical expressions of nihilism, agnosticism, or Wright’s odd but well-meaning combination of the two. I should think the lack of outright conflict should make resolution unnecessary, unless one wants to take up the tedious business of refuting the German existentialists. (In which case learning hieroglyphics is beginning to look attractive.)
It was not my point at all that dualism is the basis of all religions. Such a contention would be to over-simplify to the point of idiocy. I merely wished to point out that early cosmological dualism created the base for an astounding number of complex systems, from religions to legal codes, which are rooted in the separation of good from bad. That many of these systems conflict in ideology and/or theology does not automatically allow one to be dismissed in favor of another.
The point of debate, as Baloo points out and as ye conclude, is less to change minds than to create understanding.
Again I thank ye for not misreading my annoyance as hostility. Ye responded as a gentleman.
Dr. Watson
“Faith is a fine invention, When gentlemen can see; But microscopes are prudent, In an emergency.” --Emily Dickinson